The Computer Delusion

Most of the chemistry professors and teachers with whom I am acquainted are fairly pleased with the national trend toward putting more computers in school, college, and university classrooms. Some critics of this trend, including the author of this article in The Atlantic Monthly, remind us that the huge amount of resources being expended in this effort could also used elsewhere, and many of those alternatives have better-documented records of improving student performance than do computers. Oppenheimer makes some good points. I know of school districts that are putting millions into computers, while simultaneously starving their science programs.